Fragments of Noir

Friday, 15 May 2026

Thursday, 14 May 2026

Ed Crane's Americanness runs through him like a stick of rock. He has hardly any dialogue, but dominates the movie through his rumbling, tenor voiceover ; he is indeed there but not there. This is a classic performance from Thornton, displaying the kind of maturity and technical mastery that we hardly dared hope for from this actor. His Ed Crane forms a kind of triangle with Henry Fonda in The Wrong Man and Gary Cooper in High Noon ; a paradigm of virile, yet faintly baffled American ordinariness.

Peter Bradshaw
The Guardian
2001

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Man Who Wasn't There
2001

https://www.theguardian.com/film/2001/oct/26/coenbrothers

Body and Soul

Body and Soul
(Heyman/Green/Sour/Eyton)
Art Pepper

Wednesday, 13 May 2026

Mosaic Noir #234

Bad Day at Black Rock

Breaking Point

Auto Focus

99 River Street

Le Boucher

Desperate Hours (1955)

Angel Heart

Ghost Ship (1943)

Deadly Affair

Killers Kiss

Hotspot

Touch of Evil

In the Cut

Une Si Jolie Petite Plage

Jackie Brown

Tightspot

Public Eye

Into the Dark

Beyond the electroliers, beyond the beat and toot of the small sidewalk cars, beyond the smell of hot fat and popcorn and the shrill children and the barkers in the peep shows, beyond everything but the smell of the ocean and the suddenly clear line of the shore and the creaming fall of the waves into the pebbled spume. I walked almost alone now. The noise died behind me, the hot dishonest light became a fumbling glare. Then the lightless finger of a black pier jutted seaward into the dark. This would be the one.

Farewell My Lovely
Raymond Chandler
1940